Temple

Not a second later, three Nazi commandos snapped their G-11s over the command boat's rail and drew a bead on the bridge of his nose and in that moment, as he looked up into their eyes Van Lewen knew that his battle was over.

The three Nazis jammed down on the triggers of their guns...

*   *   *

At first, Schroeder hadn't realized what it was.

It was an odd-looking, backpack-sized device— roughly rectangular in shape, with a series of digital gauges on it, variously measured in kilohertz, megahertz and gigahertz.

Frequency measurements…

And then it had dawned on him.

it was the Nazis' jag device -the device that they had used to neutralise the Americans' communications systems when they had arrived at Vilcafor.

Stuck to the front of the device was a strip of grey electrician's tape, on which was written in German the words:

WARNING!

DO NOT SET EMP LEVELS ABOVE 1.2 gHg.

Schroeder's eyes had gone wide at the sight of the word:

'EMP'.

Jesus.

A pulse generator.

The Nazis had an electromagnetic pulse generator.

But why would they set a limit on the level of the pulse at 1.2 gigahertz?

And then it had hit him.

Schroeder immediately snatched up the G-11 next to him and looked at the specifications marked on its body.

HECKLER &: KOCH DEUTSCHLAND

- 50 V.3.5 MY: 920 CPU.“ i.S gHZ

In the nanoseconds of time in which the mind operates, he quickly recalled the theory of electromagnetic pulses: EMP nullified anything with a microprocessor in it—computers, radio transmitters, television.

And also, Schroeder realized, G-11 assault rifles, since the G-11 was the only gun in the world to Use a microprocessor-the only gun complex enough to require one.

The Nazis didn't want their men to Set the levels on their EMP generator too high, because if they did, the electromagnetic pulse would knock out their Galls.

Schroeder smiled.

And then—at exactly the same moment as Van Lewen looked up into the barrels of the Nazis' G-11 assault rifles from his position on the deck of the Scarab—Karl Schroeder had flicked on the pulse generator and turned the gigahertz dial to '1.3'.

Click. Click. Click.

Van Lewen's look of resignation turned to one of complete bewilderment as each of the three G-11s above him failed to fire.

The Nazis seemed even more bewildered. They didn't know what the hell was going on

Van Lewen didn't miss a beat.

In a second, he had his M-16 raised in one hand and his SIG-Sauer in the other. He pulled both triggers at the same time.

Both guns blazed to life.

All three Nazis were hit instantly and they flopped back behind the rail, their heads exploding in identical fountains of blood.

Bullets pinged off the rail itself, ricocheting in every direction, one of them slicing through the rope that held the Scarab to the command boat.

The speedboat immediately fell away from the big catamaran and all the Nazis on the command boat could do was hold their useless G-11s in their hands and stare at the Scarab as it receded into the ash behind them.

On the other side of the river, Doogie Kennedy sat in the swivel chair of his Pibber's forward gun turret, creating all manner of hell with the patrol boat's double-barrelled 20mm cannon.

He spun the turret around and let fly with a hailstorm of fire turning one of the Rigid Raiders speeding across the river to his left into Swiss cheese.

Then he turned his sights onto one of the helipad barges in front of him—the one with a Mosquito helicopter still on it—-and pummelled it with 20mm gunfire, rupturing its fuel tanks, causing, the entire boat-and-chopper combination to erupt into a billowing bail of fire.

'That's right! Take that, you Nazi sunzabitches!'

Three yards behind him, in the wheelhouse of the Pibber, Race drove hard scanning the river as he did so.

just then the third—and last—Mosquito attack chopper made another low pass, its side-mounted cannons blazing.

Race ducked quickly on the forward deck in front of him, Doogie swung the gun turret around and loosed d deafening burst of 20mm gunfire at the chopper, but the Mosquito just backed away sharply as his red-hot tracers hit only air around it.

At that moment, however, Race saw another Pibber gun boat swing in ominously behind them,

No Nazi gen lined its rails, no gunfire spewed forth from its 20mm gun turret,

It just kept its distance cruising silently, hanging well back behind them, at least three hundred yards away.

And then suddenly Race saw a puff of smoke burst out from the square-shaped pod that hung off its side and abruptly something long and white shot out of the pod and splashed down into the water.

'Is that what i think it is?” he said, at exactly the same moment as another Nazi Rigid Raider swung in behind their boat, in between it and the Pibber that had just launched the strange object from its side-mounted pod. Four Nazis stood on the deck of the open-topped Rigid Raider, firing at Race and Doogie with Beretta pistols.

And then suddenly—-so suddenly that it made Race jump—the Rigid Raider in between the two Pibbers just exploded.

There was no warning.